Gord hurled his dagger with full force into his opponent’s thigh. The soldier, in severe pain, made an off-balance lunge that Gord easily dodged, then prepared to attack again. But the fellow couldn’t keep from glancing down for a fraction of a second at the hilt of the weapon protruding from his thigh. That blink of time was all Gord needed. He struck a desperate blow with his sword, using both hands to maximize its effect. Blade edge snapped steel links and bone as it clove the shoulder, sending the soldier to the ground, never to rise again. Another one down, thought Gord as he crouched and rapidly surveyed the area nearby for other antagonists.
There was no one to be seen, only still forms. From the trees around the hollow he heard the sounds of battle, a shout, a cry, and then only silence broken by weak groans from the bodies scattered nearby. Gord stepped into the darkness and waited.
A few minutes passed, and then he heard the sound of cautious footsteps approaching the encampment in the hollow. The twin fires burned but feebly now, and it was difficult to distinguish anything beyond a few paces from them. A dark shape entered the clearing, moving from body to body. Gord wished he had his dagger, but he hefted the big sword, preparing to face another opponent. The unidentified man came closer. Then a tongue of flame from a burning log shot up for a moment and brought more brightness to the place. The grim face of Finn was revealed in the brief glow.
“Hey, Finn,” called Gord softly, using the fellow’s name to give immediate assurance of friendliness. “I’m here. Who else lives?” With that, Gord moved slowly from his place of concealment and allowed Finn a moment to identify him before he went to the body of the dead soldier and recovered his precious dagger.
Finn watched him with a stony expression. “So our captive is now one of the surviving Company of Freetakers,” he said with sarcasm in his voice. “Well, shit…. You must be pretty good or you wouldn’t have made it, I suppose. Most of these others sure didn’t.” He left it at that and returned to his inspection. Gord noted with a shudder that he was slitting throats.
As it turned out, Finn determined that only three of his comrades had less than mortal wounds; they .would recover and be well enough to move on in a couple of days. Finn and Gord had checked every fallen person, soldier and bandit alike. Hopelessly wounded comrades and foemen were emotionlessly done in by the tall brigand. The dead were stripped of any valuables, and the horses of the men-at-arms were tethered with the draft animals of the bandits. Gord’s heart lifted at the sight of his own stallion securely tied with the latter.
“Seeing as how there’s none to object just now,” Finn said flatly, “you and I get to divvy up the spoils. I’ll take five shares for my work. You get two, and we’ll assign one each for Jan, Crowbait, and Kalonas.”
“Hell with you,” Gord replied just as flatly. “Just because your captain died doesn’t make you chief.” Gord met a menacing stare from Finn with one of his own.
Finn broke the contest by slowly eyeballing the trio of wounded, who were in no condition to join the debate. “You take their shares, then,” he said, nodding toward them, “and we’re even.”
“Wrong again,” snapped Gord, beginning to feel anger. “I take what’s mine-including what I already got from two of those Palish soldiers-and you split up what’s left however you decide.”
Grim-faced, Finn made a motion toward the shortsword at his hip. Gord’s own was drawn quicker, but he did not attack. Finn let the blade slide back into its scabbard. “Let’s talk this over in friendly fashion, ehh…?”
“Gord is my name,” the young adventurer said, naked steel still in hand.
It took a long time, but eventually they agreed on a split. There was quite a bit of loot, far more than Gord had imagined. The dead leader of the company, one Trigon, had led the bandits in a successful raid into the Pale. The bales of goods were not common goods, it seemed, but rare commodities-fur pelts and ivory from the lands to the north, brocaded cloth and tapestries from Tenhite artisans, and the costly devotional incense of the Pale-intended for the markets of Rel Mord in Nyrond. What the former owners of these goods might have personally carried, Gord did not learn, but the dozen men-at-arms had netted the survivors of their attack ten good mounts, a pile of weapons and armor, saddles and tack, and about two orbs value in various coins.
Finn wanted the gold reliquary more than any of the other treasure. Gord agreed he could have it for a quitclaim on everything else, provided that he could get the agreement of Jan, Crowbait, and Kalonas that seven shares went to Gord, and one to each of them.
“They’ll agree,” said Finn with a sly smile, “because they know that they’re not in good enough shape to argue with me.”
Finn accompanied Gord and the wounded outlaws only as far as the edge of Nutherwood. He rode toward Midmeadow then, while Gord and the others made for Longford. As they passed through the shallows, crossing the Artonsamay into the Bandit Kingdoms, Gord wondered what fate would befall the lone man. Finn had indeed gained a far better monetary exchange, for the reliquary and its contents easily outvalued the whole of the other treasure by a factor of not less than six to one.
But that disparity didn’t trouble Gord in the least. Somehow, he thought, those Palish soldiers had managed to follow him wherever he went, despite tricks that should have at least thrown them off his trail for a bit. Somehow they had located him in the bandit camp, even though they couldn’t have tracked him through that marsh at night. Luck, perhaps. The noise of the rowdy outlaws during his testing had been over-loud, but nevertheless…. Gord did not believe that Finn would lead a long and prosperous life from the proceeds of sale of the temple’s prize.
That evening Gord and his bandit companions arrived at their destination-the outlaw city of Stoink, where they could dispose of the goods and horses and rest without fear of pursuit. At last Gord was coming to a place where everyone he met was a thief of one sort or another, and he relished the prospect. Not that he expected things would be much different, but perhaps hypocrisy and pretense would be done away with.
“Imagine,” he thought, “a place where officials honestly admit their robbery!”
Chapter 15
Once the Aerdians had amassed an empire that extended far beyond the modern-day boundaries of what is known as the Great Kingdom. At its height, the northern frontier reached all the way to the northern bank of the Artonsamay River. Stoink was then a military outpost. At first a fortified encampment, the place grew rapidly to become a town. As imperial troops were brought there to prepare for further conquest, with them came a host of civilians-craftsmen, sutlers, camp followers, and the lot. When the expansion of the Aerdy empire stopped, the locale became a bastion against invaders. It was walled and became a garrison place. The ebb of the Overking’s power came slowly, and as the edges of the empire crumbled into sovereign states, Stoink was more and more isolated from its distant rulers and took on greater individuality and independence. After some four centuries its inhabitants turned to banditry, and for two hundred years thereafter, right down to this day, they have continued to be robbers. The town was now Gord’s home, and it felt right to him.
The town proper had perhaps twelve thousand people. Two suburbs, Holdroon and Ratswharf, brought the total to fourteen thousand-when there were few bandit-cum-merchant caravans, or mercenary companies, in the area. Stoink was actually a city state, for its Lord Mayor was also “Boss” of a considerable territory, essentially what had once been a frontier march and fiefdom granted from the Overking of Aerdy. Boss Dhaelhy, Lord Mayor of Stoink, despotically ruled the destinies of somewhere between fifty and seventy thousand folk-provided his enforcers were on hand to back up his dictates. Otherwise, residents and visitors alike did pretty much as they pleased. That made for a wild, brawling, and thoroughly chaotic community, with competing factions constantly at each other’s throats.
Gord was gratified that he had come with a fat purse, for the pickings were far from ample in Stoink. Everyone was busy trying to steal from his neighbor, and of course those neighbors with anything worth taking were exceptionally vigilant with respect to guarding valuables.
Jan, Crowbait, and Kalonas took their splits and drifted off to revel in whatever sinks of debauchery they favored. Gord found an inn, The Three Gables, on the west end of town, and there he settled down to reconnoiter. For the first week or so he would occasionally encounter one or another of the three bandits, but evidently they ran out of funds and went elsewhere to seek more, for Gord never ran into them again. He certainly didn’t miss their company, for the nine wards of Stoink provided sufficient entertainment. After a few weeks, however, exploration and discovery began to weary him.
If the town was an odd mixture of buildings, its polyglot population was even stranger. From the throngs of freebooters, bargemen, and riffraff of Ratswharf, where cargo stolen from who knew where arrived daily, to Holdroon’s rowdy encampment of brigand gangs and mercenary companies, there were all races of men, near-men, and humanoids.
Stoink offered something to suit the taste, base or not, of resident and visitor alike. The shops carried goods from every part of the Flanaess, from distant parts of the Great Kingdom, the Baklunish states of Tusmit and Ekbir…. Every place seemed to produce some item that the robber bands eventually brought here. Interspersed with these shops, the vice dens, taverns, slave pens, and unidentified establishments were the stores where normal artisans, craftsmen, and tradesfolk made and sold their wares. The apparently large number of legitimate businesses surprised Gord at first, but then he realized it was logical that such a population needed the goods and services of any normal community as well as those endeavors directly related to banditry.
Ratswharf boasted a rope-walk, tanneries, and a brisk trade in small spars and timber. In Stoink proper, the tanned leather of aurochs, horses, and more exotic creatures was worked into leather goods of all sorts, especially armor and shields of exceptional quality. Gord learned that large shipments of such were sent to outfit soldiers and adventurers of the lands around the Nyr Dyv, and beyond. The origin of the armor was not advertised, naturally.
After traffic in stolen goods, the next mainstay of the economy was slave trading. That major industry brought buyers from many distant places and was the main revenue source for the town itself. Holdroon was a thriving village dominated by taverns, brothels, gambling parlors, and similar places aimed at separating arriving bandits and free-lancers from their coinage. Amid this squalor, though, were also weapon forges, horse traders, and all manner of provisioners and suppliers.
The town gates were open from dawn to dusk, but as the sun’s last rays tinged the sky with rosy hues, all large bodies of foreigners were herded outside Stoink, so there was much nighttime revelry in the two adjoining villages. Gord had sampled the offerings of these villages frequently since arriving in this bandit land. Ratswharf and Holdroon had little more than low dives, however, and Gord found he greatly preferred the entertainments of Serpent Lane and Suggil Way to anything outside the walls.
Leisure activities of this sort tended to be expensive, so after a few weeks Gord became more alert for money-making opportunities. Unlike spending opportunities, chances for gain were more scarce around here than honest men and virgins. Certainly, his skills enabled him to pick up a few coppers here, a silver noble or so there, but nothing significant. Before much more time passed, Gord found himself down to the last few drabs of his share of bandit loot and facing the prospect of dipping into his own hoard of electrum, gold, and platinum. He decided it was time to break out of his traditional mold and do something productive.
Locating the headquarters of the local Thieves’ Guild was simple-it bore a large and colorful sign! The rather splendid place was on Safe Avenue, in the Norward between the Slave Market and Stonegate, the eastern entryway that also divided Stoink’s Claybrick Ward from the administrative Greatward complex.
Safe Street was a thoroughfare linking the fortress area of the lords of the city with the bustling slave bazaar to the north. (Gord enjoyed the street names for the routes leading to the market place-Safe, Joy, Shackle… cute folk, these Stoinkers.) This seemed both a logical and cautious place for headquarters to be, near the most prosperous quarter with its back to the great blocks of the wall, and having a direct route to the government offices to the south. So thinking, Gord turned the corner of Crook Street (another enjoyable name) and crossed the pike-straight Safe Street. In a short time he was within the confines of the thieves’ home base.
“Here to recover stolen property?” a dun-clad fellow asked mildly from a trestle table that served as a desk, separating the building’s vestibule from access to the interior.
Gord surveyed him briefly, shaking his head.
The thief-guard looked surprised, for Gord appeared to be a well-to-do artisan or merchant, perhaps-one who should be uncomfortable in surroundings such as these. “Then are you here to hire services?”
Gord shook his head again and studied the interior of the place, moving so as to be able to peer into the corridor behind the speaker.
“Okay, buddy, quit gawking and tell me what the hell you do want…. Are you lost? Stupid? Or a sightseer?” At this last question, the guard got out of his chair, strode around the desk, and none too gently took Gord by the arm to usher him out.
“I’m here to join the guild,” Gord said blandly.
The thief paused in his effort to hustle the strangely hard-to-move fellow outside and laughed. “Who put you up to this, anyway?” he said, his tone growing less jocular. “It is a piss-poor joke-and you’re lucky I’m taking it easy with you!” As this last was said, the guard found that Gord had somehow turned and was moving behind him and back into the room again. Now the thief was getting peevish.